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By John Whitesides and David IngramREUTERS • Saturday July 21, 2012 11:23 AM

WASHINGTON — Denver Mayor Michael Hancock is a member of a coalition called Mayors Against
Illegal Guns, but when he issued a statement expressing shock and horror yesterday after a mass
shooting at a Colorado movie theater, he had nothing to say about gun control.

Neither did President Barack Obama nor his Republican rival Mitt Romney, though both canceled
campaign speeches yesterday and expressed sorrow for the victims of the shooting rampage.

The massacre at a midnight screening of the new Batman movie in the Denver suburb of Aurora may
spark a fresh round of soul-searching on America’s relationship with guns, but few predict any real
change in the law.

That’s because gun-control advocates have largely lost the argument against the much more
powerful gun lobby, and politicians know the issue is toxic with voters.

One of the few politicians who has long taken a stand is New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the
billionaire backer of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a coalition of mayors advocating for stricter
rules on gun sales and ownership.

Speaking on WOR radio in New York yesterday, Bloomberg called on Obama and Romney to tell the
public what they would do to reduce gun violence.

“Soothing words are nice, but maybe it’s time that the two people who want to be president of
the United States stand up and tell us what they are going to do about it,” he said.

“I don’t think there’s any other developed country in the world that has remotely the problem we
have,” Bloomberg said. “We have more guns than people in this country.”

Most Americans, however, do not believe that tougher gun laws would be the solution. Gallup
polls from the last two decades show the percentage of Americans who favor making gun-control laws “
more strict” fell from 78 percent in 1990 to 44 percent in 2010.

The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, the largest and oldest of America’s gun-control
groups, is a fraction of its peak size. The center and an affiliated political arm had revenue of
$5.9 million in 2010, the most recent year for which information is publicly available — down 27 p
ercent in three years.

In the same year, the powerful pro-gun lobby, the National Rifle Association (NRA), and its
various components took in $253 million from individuals, gun makers and sellers, and other
supporters.

Even Democratic supporters of efforts to keep a tighter rein on weapons were relatively mum
after the shooting.

Democrats in conservative and rural states fear alienating gun owners and the NRA, and crucial
presidential battleground states such as Ohio, Iowa, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia and
Wisconsin have large populations of enthusiastic gun owners.

“We’re in the summer before a presidential election, and I really don’t foresee any serious
discussion of gun control,” said Kristin Goss of Duke University, the author of
Disarmed: The Missing Movement for Gun Control in America.